Update Quicklinks: Printing, Painting, Blog
Happy Monday late Tuesday evening everyone! I hope it has been a productive week for you and everyone is doing well. This crazy household has been well with the largest nonhobby related highlight being that we got a new car in preparation of adding yet another tabletop gamer to the family. ETA 2 months and counting!
This week has been surprisingly productive. Overall I could have sworn almost every print i’ve done over the last 4 days was going to fail as there were record storms of thunder, hail, and rain. It was the most rainfall in 48 hours recorded for my region in over 10 years. I cannot believe that we never lost power and that I kept starting 18 hour plus prints trusting our cities electricity, like a crazy person. But huzzah! I never had a fail and power never went out. This along with several other things has put this crazy crafter in a very great mood.
Printing Updates
Printing this week has been immensely successful for me. In the last week or so I have taken the plunge into a new resin, the Epax Hard Grey resin. Previously I have been using Elegoo ABS-like resin and many of the supports on my prints have been failing. Many of the larger monsters don’t come out at all and pull off from the supports. However since changing materials it has been smooth sailing. I feel like my failure rate has decreased by an order of magnitude but would have to consult my spreadsheets more thoroughly for a definite value.
Here are some direct examples of Elegoo fails vs Epax Hard (dark grey) successes.
I have also been successful at printing and assembling quite a few larger monsters which always feels like an accomplishment even though I feel like I go through resin incredibly faster. Sorry wallet and handsome husband. Three finished and assembled monsters include a Graveyard Stone Golem, Guardian Dragon, and Ettin models. Several more have been started and are in progress of assembly.
For the FDM printer I have been finishing up the cottages from the Kingdom of Thamarya kickstarter. In this print project I decided to print not one but two buildings. There are 3 variations of the model, one being two story and two being different 3 story options. I opted to create the two story variant and a 3 story. This took an immensely long time and even longer because either i’m juggling WAY too many projects or my little dungeon master in training walked off with several roof pieces. Even my husband tried to help me find parts that I printed. In the end I was forced to reprint several pieces. Maybe one day in the future i’ll find some extra roofs laying around to use for who knows what. At least I have the magic of 3d printing to replace pieces.
I also lost a few pieces for the Blacksmith building and reprinted them. On top of that I printed for the first time with “Transparent” filament. Although PLA is commonly more yellow in color from production after modification and treatment people can create semi transparent prints. It can be complicated and a lot of features are involved to consider when printing. Knowing I wouldn’t get a true see through print was not important but I really wanted the coals from the Blacksmith to be glowing and will attempt to paint really thin layers to give it the effect I desire. All in all i’m really happy with the result.
Painting Update
This week like the consistent theme of March I have been doing very little painting. I started to paint the plaster of the Blacksmith but just couldn’t fully immerse myself into the project. I realized that I still had pieces and things I wanted to do on the print itself before I could truly call it ready for painting. The first part was that I decided I wanted to try a glowing LED portion for the first time ever in any of my collection to date. Since it was a Blacksmith why not have a glowing forge of hot coals?
So I did a bit of modification to the original design and drilled and cut out a hole for a tea light. I also used a bit of milliput to smooth up the edges as I didn’t want sharp plastic rubbing or potentially cutting people as they pulled the light in and out to flip the switch. In an ideal world I would have modified the STL file before 3d printing it but too late for that now. Not wanting to paint any of the stonework until I had the hole drilled this was something I absolutely HAD to do before continuing on in the project. I think it went really well. Although it was a bit more difficult to cut out a hole because I had to cut through not one but two floor pieces that was a seam in the building assembly.
Blog Update
For the blog I have planned to start a Deep Dive series of write ups posted on Fridays regarding research, experiments, and methods revolving around a category in the tabletop hobby. I am really excited to see where this goes and would be keenly interested in hearing your thoughts as I progress through the month. For more of an introduction to what is a Deep Dive you can find my write up here.
I have slowly been cataloging more miniatures & sculptors as well but the process has been slow. The goal is roughly 2 miniatures logged a day which seems reasonable however as I encounter miniatures that I have 3d printed and/or painted and they do not have write ups I require myself to have a write up for them before the go in the index. It will get done but slow and steady wins the race.
Conclusion
All in all its been a really great week. I solved the riddle to a lot of my 3d printing issues, changing resin brands. I assembled buildings and models i’ve had laying around. I have started tackling some of the storage problems I have inevitably begun having since my printers. On top of that I did two things for the first time, the use of tealights in my builds and printing with transparent filament.
Now if only I could have this kind of week of tying up loose ends every week.
As always happy hobbying. What have you been working on? Have a specific highlight you are proud of?
Happy Crafting,
Carrie aka crazmadsci
Some great work there! The architecture on the buildings is the kind of quirky, characterful look my wife and I love. We also love LED features in terrain.
Yeah I love the flow and unique character these houses have it’s a big reason why I backed the kickstarter. The curvy roofs are difficult to print though. Let’s see if I can get through the whole set. Big buildings are next.